Ahmedabad, March 8 There is a very fine line between optimism and conviction, and Gautam Gambhir often operates somewhere in between.
He has a way of getting things done, and Sunday was another great example of doing enough to achieve a goal.
History will judge whether he was a great tactician, but with two ICC white-ball trophies in consecutive years, there is no doubt that Gambhir is India's most successful men's cricket team head coach.
And not just that, perhaps he is also India's most talked-about coach, who can polarize opinions.
No coach has divided opinions as much as Greg Chappell did at the start of the millennium.
Yet, Chappell became the "villain" back then, who was unceremoniously dumped.
However, in the case of Gambhir, despite underwhelming performances in Test cricket and tough decisions regarding senior players, he always had the backing of those who mattered in the BCCI boardroom.
He has endured the wrath of social media, at times even extreme hate and endless speculation, but his determination has always mirrored the resolve he showed while batting for two days to save a Test match for India in Napier.
Gambhir's optimism is an extension of his personality – a very Delhi trait that he adopted once he realized that "good boys" rarely survive the test of time in Delhi cricket.
Despite coming from a very wealthy family, things were not easy for Gambhir.
In the politically charged environment of DDCA, performance was the only currency that kept him relevant.
He has always been fiercely opinionated. His decisions as a player, captain, and now coach may have been right or wrong, but the conviction behind them was unmistakable.
It came from a place of honesty and self-belief, reinforced by a strong sense of right and wrong.
If he believed that Ajay Jadeja had no place in the Delhi Ranji Trophy nets due to his alleged involvement in match-fixing, he was determined not to let Jadeja enter the nets until the former India all-rounder resigned.
As a Delhi captain, he fought with curators, administrators, and selectors for the players he believed in. He never cared who was in front of him – whether it was Bishan Bedi or Chetan Chauhan – as long as he knew that what he said and felt made sense.
If he believed that a young Suryakumar Yadav was his trump card when he was captain of KKR, he backed him wholeheartedly.
And when he became the India head coach, he believed that Surya was the right person to take Rohit Sharma's legacy forward, not Hardik Pandya, who seemed to be injury-prone.
If he felt that Ishan Kishan was needed for the T20 World Cup, he would ask for it. If he felt that Harshit Rana has raw talent and Washington Sundar is an all-rounder that India will need in the next 10 years, he would listen to no one.
His captaincy was very instinctive, and his coaching tenure, whether for Lucknow Super Giants or KKR and now for India, has been based on gut feel more than pure data.
There are coaches who set up players for failure, but no one can accuse Gambhir of possessing that vile trait. He would rather take a few bullets for under-performing players and back them until they are back to their best.
A case in point was Abhishek Sharma in the T20 World Cup. Varun Chakravarthy had a poor tournament by his standards, but enjoyed Gambhir's unflinching support.
When Rinku Singh's father passed away, Gambhir never asked for a replacement as he wanted his player to be back with his team.
His facial expressions rarely gave away what he was thinking or how he was feeling. A man of few words when he played for India, but a coach who would always encourage his boys to play for the flag.
T20 is a format that Gambhir always understood well, and this is the format where he will continue to excel as a coach in the coming years.
Whether he can carry this "Midas Touch" into 50 overs and Tests is a million-dollar question. If that happens, Indian cricket will reach heights that it has never seen before.